As of December 7, 2025, ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) sits at the crossroads of three big storylines:
a looming 5‑for‑1 stock split, a push deeper into identity security via the Veza acquisition, and an AI‑driven growth engine that is still humming even as investors worry about valuation and macro risk.
Shares of ServiceNow trade around $854 per share, giving the company a market value in the high‑$100‑billion range. [1] The stock has been volatile: up strongly over the last three years, but down double‑digits year‑to‑date and over the past 12 months as investors recalibrate how much they are willing to pay for high‑multiple AI software names. [2]
Here’s how the latest news, forecasts, and analysis stack up as of December 7, 2025.
ServiceNow stock today: price and recent performance
Market data from multiple sources show NOW trading in the mid‑$850s, with the last official close around $853–$854 per share on December 5, 2025. [3]
A few quick context points:
- Volatility headline: MarketBeat’s feed flags a bizarre +408% one‑day move, reflecting data distortions around the upcoming split and price adjustments rather than a literal five‑bagger in a single session. The economic reality is far more boring: NOW has moved within a wide but normal high‑growth‑tech range. [4]
- Longer‑term returns: Simply Wall St notes that ServiceNow is down about 20% year‑to‑date and ~25% over the past year, but still up more than 100% over three years — classic “great business, choppy stock” behavior in a rate‑sensitive, AI‑obsessed market. [5]
In other words, NOW is not a busted growth story; it’s an expensive growth story that the market is currently arguing about.
The 5‑for‑1 stock split: key dates and what it really means
On December 5, 2025, ServiceNow announced that shareholders had overwhelmingly approved a 5‑for‑1 stock split. [6]
The mechanics:
- Record date: December 16, 2025
- Distribution date: After market close on or about December 17, 2025
- Split‑adjusted trading begins: December 18, 2025 [7]
Shareholders of record will receive four additional shares for each share they currently hold. A pre‑split price near $850 would translate to something around $170 per share post‑split, assuming no big price move in between.
Crucially:
- The total value of your holdings doesn’t change on split day. Five cheaper shares = one expensive share in economic terms.
- What does change is liquidity and optics: more tradable shares, a lower nominal price that’s friendlier for smaller accounts and employee programs, and a bit more psychological room for new investors.
GuruFocus and other analyst aggregators frame the split as a sign of confidence and an attempt to broaden investor access, not a fix for fundamentals. [8]
Veza acquisition: identity security as the glue for AI
The other big recent headline: ServiceNow is acquiring Veza, a fast‑growing identity security company.
According to company statements and financial press coverage: [9]
- Veza was founded in 2020 and serves around 150 enterprise customers across banking, hospitality, and consumer goods.
- Its core tech is an “Access Graph” that maps relationships between human, machine, and AI identities and their permissions across systems.
- ServiceNow is using Veza to extend its security and risk portfolio, especially around AI: the idea is to control who (and which AI agents) can access what data across the enterprise.
- Financial terms were not disclosed, but multiple reports describe it as a deal “nearing $1 billion” in value. [10]
Strategically, this plugs neatly into the ServiceNow AI Platform and its AI Control Tower, which orchestrates how AI agents and workflows operate across systems. Analysts at TD Cowen, DA Davidson and BMO have pointed to the Veza deal and broader AI momentum as reasons to keep Buy or Outperform ratings, with some targets in the $1,150–$1,250 range. [11]
The subtext: in an agentic‑AI world, identity security becomes existential. If AI agents are going to wander around your enterprise doing work autonomously, you’d better know exactly what they’re allowed to touch. Veza is meant to enforce that reality.
Q3 2025: a classic beat‑and‑raise quarter
ServiceNow’s Q3 2025 results, released on October 29, 2025, are the backbone of the current bull case. [12]
From the company’s own numbers and independent summaries:
- Subscription revenue:
- $3.299 billion, up 21.5% year‑over‑year (20.5% in constant currency).
- Total revenue:
- $3.407 billion, up 22% year‑over‑year.
- Profitability:
- Non‑GAAP operating margin of 33.5%, about 300 basis points above guidance.
- Non‑GAAP free cash flow margin of 17.5%.
- Backlog & deals:
- Current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) of $11.35 billion (+21% y/y).
- Total RPO of $24.3 billion (+24% y/y).
- 103 deals over $1 million in net new ACV and 553 customers with more than $5 million in ACV.
Versus Street expectations, Fintool’s earnings summary shows: [13]
- Revenue beat by about $50 million versus S&P Global consensus.
- Non‑GAAP EPS of $4.82 versus roughly $4.27 expected — a ~13% EPS beat.
Management also used the Q3 release to authorize the 5‑for‑1 stock split and to raise full‑year 2025 guidance:
- 2025 subscription revenue lifted to $12.835–$12.845 billion, implying ~20.5% reported growth.
- Non‑GAAP operating margin raised to 31%.
- Free cash flow margin guidance raised to 34%. [14]
CEO Bill McDermott called Q3 “the clearest demonstration yet that ServiceNow is the AI platform for business transformation,” and CFO Gina Mastantuono highlighted AI‑driven efficiencies as a major factor in margin expansion. [15]
Guidance for Q4 2025 and full‑year 2025: fast, but slowing, growth
The updated guidance gives us a clean view of management’s base‑case scenario:
From ServiceNow’s official outlook: [16]
- Q4 2025 (GAAP subscription revenue):
- $3.42–$3.43 billion, implying ~19.5% year‑over‑year growth (17.5–18% in constant currency).
- cRPO growth of 23% (19% in constant currency).
- Non‑GAAP operating margin around 30%.
- Full‑year 2025 (GAAP subscription revenue):
- $12.835–$12.845 billion, up 20.5% year‑over‑year (20% in constant currency).
- Subscription gross margin ~83.5%.
- Non‑GAAP operating margin 31%.
- Free cash flow margin 34%.
A Zacks analysis (published via Nasdaq) notes that subscription revenue growth is decelerating from about 23% in 2024 to roughly 20–20.5% in 2025, even as margins move higher. [17]
Zacks also points out:
- NOW shares have fallen ~18% over the past year, lagging the broader tech sector and peers like Oracle and SAP.
- The company’s forward price‑to‑sales multiple (~11.7x) is well above sector averages (around 6.9x) and also tops many direct competitors, earning NOW a Value Score of “F” and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). [18]
So the story is: growth is still strong, margins are improving, but the valuation is demanding and the stock has already been punished for that earlier in 2025.
AI is doing the heavy lifting: Now Assist, agents and the AI Platform
Underneath the revenue and margin lines, AI is increasingly the main character.
From the Q3 call and subsequent analysis: [19]
- ServiceNow expects its AI products (including Now Assist and AI agents) to exceed $500 million in annual contract value (ACV) in 2025, with a path toward $1 billion in AI ACV in 2026.
- Management highlighted 12 AI/Now Assist deals over $1 million in Q3 and a 55x increase in AI agent “assist” consumption since May 2025.
- Security & risk has scaled into a $1 billion ACV business, with AI Control Tower increasingly pulling security products into big platform deals.
- The GSA OneGov agreement should make it easier for U.S. federal agencies to adopt ServiceNow’s AI Platform at scale, though near‑term federal budgets introduce some timing risk. [20]
On the product side, ServiceNow’s Generative AI (GenAI) page and partner content sketch an AI platform that: [21]
- Uses GenAI and AI agents (“Now Assist”) to generate content, summarize tickets, draft responses, and power virtual agents.
- Integrates with any cloud, any model and any data source to orchestrate workflows via the Now Platform and AI Control Tower.
- Targets cross‑department workflows: ITSM and ITOM, CRM, HR, finance/supply chain, and public‑sector use cases.
The Veza acquisition explicitly ties into this: AI agents are only as safe as the permissions system underneath them. Veza gives ServiceNow a graph‑based identity layer to plug into that AI fabric.
Wall Street’s NOW stock forecasts: wide dispersion, same basic question
Here’s where things get spicy. Analyst targets for NOW are all over the map, largely because of disagreement on how much AI growth is already “priced in.”
Consensus ratings
Across major aggregators, the rating story is fairly consistent:
- MarketBeat:
- Consensus rating: Moderate Buy based on 38 analysts.
- Breakdown: 32 Buy (including Strong Buy), 5 Hold, 1 Sell. [22]
- Zacks (via Nasdaq):
- Zacks Rank: #3 (Hold).
- Emphasizes stretched valuation and macro/federal headwinds, despite strong fundamentals. [23]
- Benzinga:
- Reports a consensus Buy rating with a target of $1,128.97 based on 32 analysts. [24]
- GuruFocus:
- Notes a “Buy”‑leaning recommendation score (~1.8 on their scale) and a target in the mid‑$1,100s. [25]
So the rating picture is: still broadly bullish, but not unanimously euphoric.
Price targets: two very different clusters
- The “AI growth premium is fine” camp
- Benzinga: consensus target around $1,129, implying roughly 30% upside from the mid‑$850s. [26]
- Fintel: aggregates analyst models and lands on an average 12‑month target in the low‑$1,100s, with the highest targets in the $1,350+ range and the lowest in the mid‑$700s. [27]
- TD Cowen, DA Davidson, BMO: individually cited targets in the $1,150–$1,250 range after Q3 and the Veza announcement, all with Buy/Outperform ratings. [28]
- 20%+ revenue growth
- accelerating AI monetization
- margin expansion
= justification for a premium multiple and a four‑digit share price.
- The “this looks toppy” camp
- MarketBeat’s forecast page currently shows a consensus target of $229.93 with a stated 73% downside from the ~$854 share price. High estimate: $263. Low: $144.80. [29]
- Simply Wall St does a more structured valuation breakdown:
- Their DCF model estimates an intrinsic value of ~$930 per share, suggesting around 10% undervaluation versus current prices.
- But on a relative basis, they flag a trailing P/E over 100x versus a software industry average near 31x, and a “fair” P/E closer to the mid‑40s based on growth and risk.
- Their framework gives ServiceNow just 2/6 “passes” on valuation checks, concluding that a lot of perfection is priced in. [30]
- Zacks, via Nasdaq, hits similar themes: NOW trades at ~11.7x forward sales, well above sector peers, and carries a Value Score of F even as earnings estimates for 2025 and 2026 trend upward. [31]
Put simply: the bullish models say “AI + margins = justified premium,” while the cautious ones say “even for AI, this is expensive.”
Key risks and watchpoints heading into 2026
Even if you’re firmly in the bull camp, a few risk flags are hard to ignore.
- Valuation risk Across GuruFocus, Zacks and Simply Wall St you see variations on the same theme:
- P/E in the triple digits,
- price‑to‑sales almost 2x sector averages,
- and rich price‑to‑book metrics. [32]
- Government and macro exposure Management has explicitly baked U.S. federal budget uncertainty and a recent government shutdown into its Q4 guidance, particularly for cRPO and deal timing. [33] Demand looks healthy — federal net new ACV grew more than 30% in Q3 — but timing risk can make quarterly numbers lumpy.
- Competition in AI workflows Analyses from Zacks, Benzinga and others repeatedly mention Microsoft, Salesforce, Workday, Oracle and SAP as heavyweight competitors in AI‑enhanced workflows and CRM/ITSM. [34] ServiceNow doesn’t need to “win” every deal, but its premium valuation assumes it keeps winning the right ones.
- AI hype and sentiment rotation Wedbush recently removed ServiceNow (and Salesforce) from its “Ives AI 30” list, rotating toward what it views as fresher AI opportunities like CoreWeave and IREN, even while maintaining a constructive stance on NOW overall. [35] The message: even bulls are asking whether the easy AI rerating is behind us.
- Integration and execution risk (Veza and beyond) The Veza acquisition should reinforce the platform, but it brings the usual M&A questions:
- Can ServiceNow integrate a cutting‑edge security startup without slowing it down?
- Will Veza’s identity graph become a must‑have feature across the platform, or a nice‑to‑have add‑on? [36]
The bottom line on ServiceNow (NOW) stock as of December 7, 2025
Right now, the ServiceNow story looks something like this:
- Business quality:
- High‑growth, high‑margin SaaS platform with >20% revenue growth, 80%+ gross margins, and expanding operating and free cash flow margins. [37]
- Deep entrenchment in mission‑critical workflows and a fast‑maturing AI stack.
- Growth engine:
- AI ACV on track for $500M+ in 2025, with a clear path to $1B+.
- Large‑deal activity and $5M+ ACV customers are growing; renewal rates sit in the high‑90s. [38]
- Near‑term catalysts:
- Core tension:
- Even bullish models that see fair value in the $1,100–$1,200 zone still acknowledge that NOW is priced for a long runway of AI‑driven growth and execution. [41]
- More skeptical frameworks (and some consensus sets like MarketBeat’s) treat the current price as reflecting years of success upfront, leaving little room for disappointment. [42]
For long‑term‑oriented investors, the debate boils down to belief in three things:
- That AI‑native workflows really are a decade‑long secular trend, not a passing hype cycle.
- That ServiceNow will remain one of the core “operating systems” of enterprise work in that world.
- That today’s valuation leaves enough upside after paying for all of the above.
This article is informational only and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Anyone considering NOW (or any stock) should think carefully about risk tolerance, time horizon, and portfolio concentration, and should consult a qualified financial professional for personal guidance.
References
1. www.gurufocus.com, 2. simplywall.st, 3. www.marketbeat.com, 4. www.marketbeat.com, 5. simplywall.st, 6. newsroom.servicenow.com, 7. newsroom.servicenow.com, 8. www.gurufocus.com, 9. www.investing.com, 10. www.investing.com, 11. www.investing.com, 12. www.servicenow.com, 13. fintool.com, 14. www.servicenow.com, 15. www.servicenow.com, 16. www.servicenow.com, 17. www.nasdaq.com, 18. www.nasdaq.com, 19. fintool.com, 20. fintool.com, 21. www.servicenow.com, 22. www.marketbeat.com, 23. www.nasdaq.com, 24. www.benzinga.com, 25. www.gurufocus.com, 26. www.benzinga.com, 27. fintel.io, 28. www.investing.com, 29. www.marketbeat.com, 30. simplywall.st, 31. www.nasdaq.com, 32. www.gurufocus.com, 33. www.servicenow.com, 34. www.nasdaq.com, 35. seekingalpha.com, 36. www.investing.com, 37. www.servicenow.com, 38. fintool.com, 39. newsroom.servicenow.com, 40. www.investing.com, 41. www.benzinga.com, 42. www.marketbeat.com
